Blog Profile / Dot Physics
| URL : | http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/dotphysics | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Physics | |
| Posts on Regator: | 304 | |
| Posts / Week: | 3.1 | |
| Archived Since: | July 11, 2011 | |
Blog Post Archive
Can a Stack of Humans Win the 50 m Freestyle?
Hat tip to twitter user grabe31 for sending me a link to this video. It is indeed awesome. Let’s consider some questions regarding the video. Could You Stack Humans That High? Well, first – this is probably against the international...
How Do You Model the Earth-Moon-Sun System?
Why should I stop talking about the Earth-moon-Sun system? There really is no reason. So, let me continue the discussion with a short tutorial that goes through the steps to make this model. The Physics There isn’t that much physics...
How Many Leaves Are On This Tree?
Many of my questions come from my kids. As we were cleaning up leaves, we pushed all the leaves from one tree into a corner. My daughter asked me to estimate the number of leaves in the pile (yes, she...
How Long Can Oregon Change Their Uniforms?
The University of Oregon’s football team is known not only for their explosive offense. They are also considered to be the most explosive in terms of fashion. It seems that every game they have a different uniform. I found this...
Eagle Picks Up a Kid: Real or Fake?
Sometimes I feel like Peter Parker (you know, Spider-Man). I have real work to do, but then I hear these sirens on the Internet and I must go to action. Well, what about this kid being carried away by an...
How Much Does It Cost to Power Your Christmas Lights?
Most people that are putting up Christmas decorations have already finished the task. Of course, if you are a business or a city you probably put up lights before Halloween – I have no idea why. So, of course I...
How Much Rain Does the Mississippi River Need?
The Mighty Mississippi River has been in the news lately. In short, the river level is pretty darn low causing navigation difficulties. Boats are running into the bottom of the river due to the lack of depth. Question: How much...
How Strong is a Hobbit?
I wasn’t going to do another post on The Hobbit, but I can’t stop. Let me look at the scale of hobbits. Really, it is one of my favorite ideas. The idea that things that are scaled down from something...
How Many Fish Does Gollum Need?
Gollum lives underground where it's cold. How much would he need to eat to keep a constant body temperature? Wired Science blogger Rhett Allain considers the energy requirements of this cave-dwelling creature.
How Does Gollum See in the Dark?
Is Gollum the coolest character in The Hobbit? Maybe, just maybe. Ok, before I go on I should perhaps give a spoiler warning. There. You have been warned. Really, perhaps I don’t need to give a spoiler warning for this...
Does the Moon Orbit the Sun or the Earth?
Everyone knows the moon orbits the Earth and that the Earth orbits the Sun. But what about the path of the moon around the Sun? What does that look like? I will go ahead and state that this is a...
How to Make a Hobbit With Forced Perspective
How do you make a hobbit? Clearly, there are some options. You could just make the whole movie animated and draw a hobbit however you like. Or you could use really short people to play hobbits (and dwarves). The last...
Why Doesn’t the Moon Crash Into the Earth?
I strive to create better explanations each day. I have a feeling that I have already answered this question. However, I want to try again. The question was from a friend’s child. He asked: So, the Earth pulls on the moon because of gravity? Why doesn’t the moon get pulled into the Earth and crash? [...]
A Better Estimate for the Size of Bad Piggies
Clearly, I am now addicted to Bad Piggies. Well, I’m not actually obsessed with Bad Piggies, I am obsessed with the analysis of Bad Piggies. My first Bad Piggies post looked at the size of stuff. The basic method was to look at the acceleration of objects in the game and assume that the events [...]
Black Friday Physics Links and Homework
Yeah. It’s Black Friday. Maybe shopping or football isn’t really your thing. If that is the case, I have some physics for you. Maybe this will help you if you are out stuck in a shopping line. Homework Yes, I know that I usually give homework questions at the end of a post. Let me [...]
Red Bull Stratos and the Weight of Air
Here is something cool from the Red Bull Stratos jump. While watching the live broadcast, I noticed something. Once Felix reached his jump altitude, he went through a check list of tasks that needed to be completed before the jump. One task was to reduce the pressure inside the capsule to the ambient pressure outside. [...]
The Physics of Balloons in Bad Piggies
Let me continue my exploration of the Bad Piggies world by looking at the balloons. I already know the mass of the some of the stuff, so this will help. Let’s get to work. Do These Balloons Keep Accelerating? Here is a wooden box with a pig and two balloons. This is pretty much the [...]
Should Students Use Wikipedia?
Imagine the following fake conversation with a student: Student: The instructor in another course said something about anti-matter. What is anti-matter? Who could I read about that? Me: Well, you could go to Wikipedia. I am sure the page on anti-matter has a nice summary. Student: Wikipedia??? Really? I thought all faculty hated Wikipedia. We [...]
The Mass of Stuff in Bad Piggies
Although Angry Birds is a great source for some cool physics, what about Bad Piggies? The nice thing about Bad Piggies is that it is easy to set up your own experiments since you get to build stuff. Here I will try to find the masses of the different building block isn Bad Piggies. There [...]
How Long Would It Take to Fall Through the Earth?
I didn’t see the latest version of the movie Total Recall (2012). However, I heard some people talking about the elevator scene. Here is what I gather from the plot (which could be wrong). There are essentially just two cities on Earth in the future. The only way to get from one city to the [...]